Hey brother, can you spare a story?

I don't have an M.B.A. and I've never had a cubicle job, so I don't "get" Dilbert the way some do. Still, I like it. In fact, I save Dilbert and read it last of all the comics each day. Though I can't directly relate to a lot of the cubicle-specific issues, I've always felt a sort of kinship with Dilbert's creator, Scott Adams. Now I know why. We're storytellers.

It has come to my attention that most people have no good stories. If you ask people to tell their best stories, you get blank stares and then something along the lines of “Well, once I lost my wallet.”

This has long puzzled me because I’m full of stories. How could I have so many, and other people have so few?

Now I'm not saying I'm in Adams' league as a storyteller, but I do like a good tale and I seem to attract "odd moments". In fact, my colleagues at UAH used to wonder where all the weird students hid before I came on board. Their reasoning was that those students HAD to be there somewhere, yet they never encountered them until I showed up. I always maintained that my co-workers HAD encountered these unique souls, they just weren't paying attention. Turns out Adams has a similar theory:

One theory for this apparent discrepancy is that everyone’s life includes plenty of fascinating events but few people organize them in their memories as stories.

I feel an odd sense of empowerment, but I'm also a little disgruntled that he turned his storytelling ability into a lucrative career and I ... Well, I haven't.

Anyway, Mr. Dilbert even offers his best story ever and I must admit, it's pretty damned good. That, though, got me to thinking, do I have best stories? I thought a moment and decided these are the best ones I've blogged about:

The gun in the laundry basket.
The night I locked myself out of the house during the playoffs.
Falling in Caney Creek.
The cheeky panhandler.

You may not think those are good stories, but I still chuckle when I think of them and that's pretty much my criterion for a good story. Oh, I have a new story to add! It happened last week, but I don't have time to recount it right now. Tune in next time ...